Sailors Behind the Medals: Waging War at Sea, 1939–1945

By Chris Bilham

Twenty-three riveting true stories of the heroic acts that earned WWII Royal Navy sailors their awards for gallantry.Includes photos.
 
The story of the Royal Navy in the Second World War is an epic, consisting of both dramatic battles such as the River Plate and Matapan, and drawn-out campaigns such as the escort of convoys to Malta and northern Russia. Sailors Behind the Medals examines the careers of twenty-three sailors whose part in these actions resulted in the award of their medals.
 
The author illustrates a cross-section of the wartime navy: long-service regulars, volunteers, recalled veterans of the Great War, Hostilities Only ratings. They served on nearly every kind of warship and in all the main theaters of the war, and their individual acts of gallantry under extreme conditions make for inspiring reading. Also included is an examination of the medals that were awarded for gallantry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781473896512

Book preview

Chapter 1

Death of a Pocket Battleship

Herbert Charles Ricketts

2404 Musician, Royal Marines Band

On 21 August 1939, ten days before the German army smashed into Poland, the pocket battleship Graf Spee sailed from Wilhelmshaven with a full load of ammunition and stores. She was instructed to proceed to her wartime station in the North Atlantic and await instructions. Hitler had told Admiral Raeder, commander of the Kriegsmarine, that he did not expect the United Kingdom and France to declare war in response to his attack on Poland but, evidently, Raeder thought it best to be prepared. Undetected by the Royal Navy, the Graf Spee steamed north to Norway, then southwards, into the mid-Atlantic.

Graf Spee.

At 11,800 tons Graf Spee was well below the normal size for a battleship, but her armament (six 11-inch guns) and speed of 26 knots made her more than a match for any existing cruiser. She was classified as a pocket battleship.

Even after the declaration of war on 3 September, her commander, Captain Hans Langsdorff, was ordered to lie low. It was not until 26 September that he was authorized to commence combat operations. Four days later the Graf Spee sank her first victim, the steamer Clement, off Bahia (Brazil). Over the following two months she sank a further seven vessels, raiding off West Africa and even into the Indian Ocean before returning to the South Atlantic. The pocket battleship was accompanied by her supply ship Altmark, to which she transferred most of the captured merchant marine seamen. On 7 December she sank her ninth and last victim, a 3,895 ton freighter. Langsdorff then intended to raid the waters off the River Plate before returning to Germany.

The Royal Navy deployed a large number of warships in the South Atlantic in an attempt to locate and destroy the elusive raider. Some of these ships formed a squadron designated Force ‘G’, based at the Falklands. Commanded by Commodore Henry Harwood, it consisted of the cruisers Ajax (flagship), Exeter and Achilles. The first two had been on the South American station since before the war; the Achilles joined the squadron from New Zealand in October 1939.

HC Ricketts.

Among the crew of the Achilles in 1939 was Herbert Ricketts, a Royal Marines musician. Born in Yeovil, Somerset, in 1901, he enlisted in the Royal Marines as a band boy in September 1915, just a few days after his fourteenth birthday, and trained at the Royal Marines School of Music at Eastney. It was believed that an aptitude for music indicated an aptitude for mathematics as well and, like many bandsmen, Ricketts was also trained as a Fire Controller (responsible for calculating the range and bearing of the guns).

In September 1917 Ricketts joined his first ship, the armoured cruiser Shannon, deployed with the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow. In January 1920 he was drafted to the battleship Revenge which was deployed in the eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea in response to the Russian Civil War and the hostilities between Greece and Turkey. Over the following years, service at sea in different parts of the world alternated with service ashore. Ricketts served in the Emperor of India in the Mediterranean, in the heavy cruiser Berwick in the China Fleet and in the light cruiser Cardiff on the African Station, based at Simonstown. Over the following two years she was deployed for visits and exercises in the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

In 1933 Ricketts was drafted to Excellent, the gunnery school at Whale Island near Portsmouth. This establishment was noted as the Navy’s hotbed of drill, discipline, spit-and-polish and ceremonial generally – no doubt it was a demanding posting for a bandsman. Throughout his service Ricketts’ character was assessed as ‘Very Good’ and in 1934, having completed fifteen years’ service as an adult, he was awarded a Long Service and Good Conduct Medal.

HMS Achilles

On 21 March 1936 Ricketts joined the Achilles when she recommissioned. She was a Leander class light cruiser, first commissioned in 1933, with a displacement of 7,270 tons (standard), a speed of 32.5 knots (60 km/h), and a peacetime complement of 550. Her armament consisted of eight 6-inch and four 4-inch guns and eight torpedo tubes. She carried two aircraft.

Achilles was allocated to the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy (at the time there was no New Zealand Navy) and about sixty per cent of her company were New Zealanders. Achilles sailed for Auckland in April 1936 but her plans were disrupted by orders to join the 2nd Cruiser Squadron at Gibraltar. The Italian campaign in Abyssinia and the increasing political unrest in Spain created a tense situation in the Mediterranean. She finally left Gibraltar on 17 July and arrived at Devonport (Auckland) on 6 September 1936.

HMS Achilles.

As war approached, in August 1939 the British Government exercised its right to put the ships of the New Zealand Division under its direct control. Achilles and other vessels were prepared for active service. On the 30th the Admiralty requested the New Zealand Government to send one of its cruisers to join the Royal Navy’s West Indies force, and things then moved very fast. This signal was passed to the Achilles at 09.00hrs and she sailed five hours later. Before sailing two RNR officers from New Zealand’s other cruiser and a draft of ratings from the Philomel (Auckland’s naval base) joined her company to bring it up to its full wartime complement of 567. This comprised twenty-six officers and 220 ratings and marines from the Royal Navy (including Captain Parry, the commanding officer), and five officers and 316 ratings from the New Zealand Division.

The Achilles was well out into the Pacific on her passage to Balboa and the Panama Canal when, at 01.00 hrs on 3 September, the Admiralty signalled ‘Commence hostilities against Germany.’ The ship’s orders were changed and, as the only British warship on the west coast of America, she was deployed off the west coast of Panama to intercept German shipping. Instead of traversing the canal to join the squadron in the West Indies she was then routed south through the Straits of Magellan to join Force ‘G’ in the South Atlantic.

On 13 December 1939 Force G took part in the Battle of the River Plate, a classic naval battle which did much to raise morale in the tense days of the ‘Phoney War’. Force ‘G’ was patrolling about 240 miles off the coast of Uruguay. At 06.15hrs Exeter's lookout sighted smoke on the horizon to the north-west; the ship investigated and two minutes later reported: ‘I think it is a pocket battleship.’ Minutes later the other two cruisers sighted the enemy and deployed as planned by Harwood and his captains for this contingency. As Achilles went to action stations she flew the New Zealand ensign at her main mast.

The Graf Spee was a formidable opponent for the three British cruisers. She was armed with six 11-inch guns, with a range of 30,000 yards (seventeen miles or twenty-seven kilometres). Each gun fired a shell weighing 670 pounds. In addition she had eight 5.9-inch guns and eight torpedo tubes. Exeter's six 8-inch guns fired 256-pound shells and the two light cruisers mounted 6-inch guns firing shells of only 112 pounds. The total weight of shell from the three ships was 3,328 pounds, while a full broadside from the Graf Spee amounted to 4,850 pounds. The British squadron enjoyed some advantages; they could fire at a faster rate than the pocket battleship and they were four to five knots faster.

Ajax and Achilles turned north-west to close the range and Exeter turned west to expose the Graf Spee to fire from two directions. The Germans would either have to split their gunnery or leave at least one of their assailants unengaged by her big guns. At first she concentrated her fire on the Exeter. Within a few minutes Exeter’s ‘B’ turret received a direct hit, killing all inside. The bridge was swept by a lethal shower of steel splinters; Captain Bell was wounded and several others killed. Within half an hour both forward turrets had been knocked out, she was on fire, several compartments had been flooded and she was down by the head and had a seven-degree list to starboard.

Meanwhile Graf Spee had been bombarded by the Ajax and Achilles. The Achilles in particular fired with extraordinary rapidity – nine rounds a minute. In the first eighty minutes of the battle she fired more than 200 broadsides, a total of sixty-one tons of shells. Her guns overheated and became stuck as they recoiled: ‘gunners with heavy boots kicked the inert breech-blocks, called them names not found in gunnery manuals, and found the treatment worked.’ (Jack Harker, ‘HMNZS Achilles’). After some minutes of this harassment the Graf Spee turned her main armament on the two light cruisers. Observers saw six great tongues of flame gush out from the rolling black smoke along her length; there was almost a minute of suspense as observers on both sides waited to see the result. Many glanced at their wristwatches as the seconds ticked by.

Both Ajax and Achilles were hit but suffered much less than the Exeter, which was forced to retire from the action. Achilles, benefitting from a combination of expert ship-handling and a generous measure of luck, suffered the least. Most of her casualties and damage resulted from an 11-inch shell which burst close to her navigation bridge, killed four ratings and seriously wounded another in her director control tower.

Achilles in action.

The concentrated pounding from the two cruisers, and damage inflicted earlier by the Exeter’s eight-inch shells, proved too much for the Graf Spee and she ran for the shelter of Montevideo in neutral Uruguay. There she was given sanctuary for seventy-two hours to repair damage and bury her thirty-six dead. Tension was high in the Ajax and Achilles when the Graf Spee put to sea on the expiry of the time limit. Powerful warships were on their way but had not yet arrived.

Ajax’s sea-plane flew over Montevideo and reported ‘Spee is blowing herself up’. The British had bluffed the Germans that the Renown and other large ships were already waiting outside the harbour for Graf Spee to emerge and Langsdorff decided to avoid what he considered would be useless bloodshed. On the evening of 17 December she sailed from Montevideo with a skeleton crew, stopped eight miles from the harbour entrance and was scuttled. Harker recalled:

‘We look at each other in amazement and, as the truth dawns, laugh with relief. The captain orders all hands on deck. We are cheering ourselves hoarse. Gun crews stand atop their turrets, each ship is black with ratings from director-top to fo’csle, all cheering, laughing and singing.’

Captain Langsdorff shot himself, observing that no captain with a sense of honour could separate his personal fate from that of his ship.

Achilles, having spent Christmas in the Falklands, visited Montevideo for a reception by the British community. A group of her sailors entered a bar there and were startled when the band abruptly stopped and the dancers returned to their tables. They belatedly realised they were in the German social club. One sailor noticed several Graf Spee ratings sitting nearby; he led his shipmates over to them and offered their hands. To their immense relief the Germans stood and shook hands and the band broke into a lively waltz. Achilles returned to Auckland on 23 February 1940 to a hero’s welcome. More than 100,000 people thronged Queen Street to cheer her men as they marched to the Town Hall for a civic reception and luncheon. From March to May she was under refit. On 29 February Ricketts married Doreen Annette Ricketts at Christchurch; they lived in Devonport, near Auckland’s naval base.

Graf Spee burning.

The Achilles carried out post-refit trials and prepared for operational service in June. For the remainder of 1940 and throughout 1941 she was based at Auckland and deployed in the South Pacific. New Zealand waters were visited by German raiders; in June 1940 the Orion laid mines which sank the liner Niagara in the Hauraki Gulf; the same ship sank the steamer Turakina in the Tasman on 20 August and, in company with a second raider, the Komet, she sank the 16,712 ton liner Rangitane on 27 November 1940. Achilles searched in vain for the raiders from the Kermadecs in the north to the Campbell Islands in the sub-Antarctic. She was also deployed on escorting convoys, and sometimes even single ships, between New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific islands, and carried senior military and government officials to conferences at such destinations as Rarotonga and Tahiti.

Victory parade, Auckland.

By an Order in Council dated 1 October 1941 the naval forces of New Zealand were designated the Royal New Zealand Navy. The Achilles was transferred to the RNZN on the same date and henceforward known as HMNZS Achilles.

The Achilles was at Suva on 8 December 1941 when war was declared against Japan. She was immediately transferred to the Eastern Fleet and nominated to join the Prince of Wales and Repulse at Singapore, but the order was cancelled when those were sunk and she returned to Auckland. Over the next two months she was deployed escorting troop convoys as the United States, Australia and New Zealand moved troops to New Caledonia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji.

The Allies agreed to set up a unified naval command under the direction of the United States Navy in the South Pacific. New Zealand contributed Achilles and Leander to the ‘Anzac Squadron’ which assembled at Suva on 12 February 1942. Together with an American Task Force, the squadron sailed to attack Rabaul but was observed by Japanese aircraft. On 20 February the Allied force was attacked by eighteen bombers. No ships were lost but so much fuel was expended in highspeed manoeuvring to evade the aircraft that the ships could not complete their mission and withdrew to Suva. The two New Zealand cruisers resumed their mundane but important task of escorting convoys until the end of the year.

On 30 December 1942 Achilles joined Task Force 67 at Espiritu Santo in the New Hebrides. On 5 January 1943 the Achilles, with other ships of Task Force 67, was operating off Cape Hunter on the south coast of Guadalcanal when, at 09.25hrs, four aircraft were sighted at an altitude of 12,000 feet. They were correctly identified as American. Two minutes later, however, four more aircraft were seen diving through the clouds towards the cruisers – these were recognized as Japanese and the aircraft alarm was sounded. Three concentrated their attack on the USS Honolulu, while the fourth made for the Achilles. The former ship was unscathed although there were some near misses. The Achilles was not so lucky. She was taking evasive action and turning to starboard when a bomb hit the top of ‘X’ turret which was manned by Royal Marines. The bomb penetrated the armour and exploded inside on the right-hand gun. The blast blew the right side of the turret overboard and split its roof in two, tossing one half on the quarterdeck together with the anti-aircraft gun which had been mounted on top of the turret. The other half of the roof landed back on top of the wrecked turret. The explosion was followed by a fire but this was confined to the immediate area and quickly extinguished. Eleven men were killed instantly, and two more hurt so badly that they later died of wounds. Eight more men were wounded, some seriously.

It was the end of the Solomons campaign for Achilles. After temporary repairs, and aided by the American repair ship Vestal, the cruiser headed for England. She arrived at Portsmouth on 22 March and was paid off. Ricketts was drafted back to the RM School of Music. The Achilles had an extensive refit including rearmament and only returned to New Zealand nearly two years later.

HMNZS Gambia

It was decided to maintain intact the ship’s company which had attained a high standard of efficiency. The Gambia was due to be recommissioned around September and the Admiralty agreed to transfer her to the RNZN.

A light cruiser of the Fiji class, the 8,000 ton Gambia mounted twelve 6-inch guns in four turrets, eight 4-inch guns, twenty-two light anti-aircraft guns and six torpedo tubes. She had a maximum speed of 32 knots. She was commissioned at Liverpool on 22 September 1943, under the command of Captain N.J.W. William-Powlett DSC, RN. Ricketts also joined the ship’s company on that date.

After working up at Scapa Flow, the Gambia took part in operations to intercept enemy blockade runners trying to slip back to Germany. On 30 January 1944 she sailed from Plymouth for Trincomalee, where she formed part of the 4th Cruiser Squadron. In April she took part in an attack on Sebang, an island off the northwest tip of Sumatra; the operation was primarily a diversion while American forces landed on the north coast of Dutch New Guinea. For the most part Gambia’s role was to escort the carriers, from which flew the aircraft which carried out the attack, but in July Gambia and two other cruisers carried out a naval bombardment, firing more than a thousand shells and wrecking a radio station and the Japanese shore batteries. The cruiser then had a quiet time on exercises followed by a refit in Colombo. When she returned to Trincomalee in October, she was relieved by the Achilles – now finally repaired. The Gambia then sailed for New Zealand escorting two American transports as far as Fremantle. She arrived at Wellington on 24 November 1944.

In February 1945 the Gambia sailed first to Sydney, then to Manus where she joined the British Pacific Fleet. The following month she formed part of Task Force 5 which included four British carriers. While the Americans fought in Okinawa the Fleet Air Arm mounted a sustained attack on the nearby Sakashima Islands. The Japanese responded with repeated air raids, including the use of kamikazes; on 2 April the Gambia was detached to tow the destroyer Ulster, which had been badly damaged in one such attack, to Leyte. The 760 mile tow, carried out at eight knots, took four days. At this time there was an epidemic of mumps on board the cruiser, and scores of men had to be transferred to hospital ships. Gambia then re-joined Task Force 57 which finally withdrew on 20 April after being at sea continuously for thirty-one days – the longest spell at sea for a British force of any size in modern times.

The Task Force returned to the Sakashima Islands to resume the attack on 4 May. Several of the battleships and cruisers detached to carry out a bombardment of Japanese airfields on one of the islands; the Japanese took advantage of their absence to carry out extensive air attacks in which the carrier Formidable was hit and damaged by a kamikaze. In another attack a few days later the Gambia was targeted by a suicide plane, but it made a sudden turn and crashed onto the Formidable instead – her second hit. The Task Force withdrew on 25 May having mounted twelve series of attacks on the islands. During these operations the ships were at sea for sixty-two days, broken by only eight days in the Leyte Gulf. The Gambia was with the task force for the whole period apart from the few days spent escorting the Ulster. In May alone the Gambia steamed 10,684 miles. After the operation she made for Manus then back to Sydney for a refit.

Ricketts left the Gambia on 19 June and returned to New Zealand. He was demobilized soon after the end of the war and, after thirty years of service, remained in New Zealand for the rest of his life.

Medals

Ricketts was awarded the following medals: British War Medal and Victory Medal (both named to him as "R.M.B. Mus.), 1939–45 Star, Pacific Star with clasp Burma", War Medal, Royal Naval Long Service & Good Conduct Medal, GV, 3rd type (Mus, HMS Excellent).

Note: some medals were issued with the name and other details of the recipient imprinted around the circumference, others were issued unnamed. In the case of the former, the rank and ship (if shown) are here recorded in italics.

HMS Achilles was deployed in the Atlantic for only a short time before being redeployed to the Pacific and her company was not eligible for the Atlantic Star.

Chapter 2

‘The Navy’s Here!’

Charles Herbert Scott

Chief Petty Officer P/JX 127913 (later MX844100), Royal Navy

After the destruction of the Graf Spee one outstanding matter remained. The raider’s supply ship Altmark had separated from her on 7 December 1939 and was making her way back to Germany. She was known to be carrying most of the merchant seamen from the ships the Graf Spee had captured. On 15 January 1940 the British received information that the Altmark was off Bergen, Norway.

A naval force, consisting of five destroyers (commanded by Captain P.L. Vian in the Cossack) and a light cruiser had sailed from Rosyth the previous day to carry out a sweep along the Norwegian coast. Vian was informed that his priority was the Altmark; on the afternoon of 16 January Vian located the German ship in Jossing Fiord, accompanied by a Norwegian torpedo boat. Vian expressed his attention to board the Altmark and search her for prisoners; the Norwegians replied that the ship had already been checked, no British prisoners were on board, and any attempt to infringe Norwegian neutrality would be resisted. Vian referred to the Admiralty for further instructions. At this juncture the First Lord himself, Winston Churchill, took charge and authorized Vian to enter the fiord and board the German ship using any necessary force to overcome Norwegian obstruction.

The Cossack's crew included Charles Scott, a gunnery specialist from London. Scott was born in East Ham in 1911. Immediately after leaving school in 1926 he enlisted in the Royal Navy as a Boy Second Class and trained at the Ganges, the Boys’ training establishment at Shotley, near Harwich. Over the following years Scott was drafted to the battleship Iron Duke, the light cruisers Cardiff and Despatch both deployed in the Mediterranean Fleet, the sloop Fleetwood and the destroyer Crusader. When not at sea he returned to Victory, the Portsmouth depot, and Excellent, the nearby gunnery training establishment at Whale Island. He was rated Leading Seaman.

HMS Cossack

On 9 June 1938 Scott was drafted to the destroyer Cossack which had just been completed at Barrow-in-Furness; she sailed to Portsmouth where she was commissioned on 14 June. The Cossack was one of the Tribal class destroyers. The Admiralty ordered sixteen of these which entered service in 1938 and 1939; another eight were built for the Royal Canadian Navy and three for the Royal Australian Navy. They had a displacement of 1,854 tons (standard), a speed of 36 knots and a complement of 190 (219 for flotilla leaders). Priority was given to providing guns to protect the fleet from enemy surface craft and their armament consisted of eight 4.7-inch guns, four 2-pounder pompoms, eight machine-guns, four torpedo tubes and two depth-charge throwers.

The Cossack proceeded to the Mediterranean to carry out patrols off the coast of Spain where civil war was still raging. In September 1938 she accompanied her sister-ship Afridi to Istanbul on a goodwill visit which was cut short because of the Munich crisis.

Cossack was at Alexandria when war broke out in September 1939. She patrolled with her division off Crete, then went to Malta and, on 10 September, began escorting French troopships in the Mediterranean. The flotilla returned to the United Kingdom in October and was deployed escorting east coast convoys. On the night of 7/8 November Cossack collided with a merchant ship; four of her company were killed and she went to Leith for repairs.

HMS Cossack.

Cossack approaches Altmark.

In January 1940 Captain Philip Vian took command and Cossack became leader of the 4th Destroyer Flotilla (4 DF). At 2200hrs on 16 January 1940 Vian took the Cossack into Jossing Fiord with no Norwegian resistance. At 2312hrs she rounded a bend and sighted the Altmark with her bows inshore, encased in ice, her great bulk standing black against the snow-clad mountains.

The big tanker suddenly switched on her searchlights to dazzle Cossack's bridge personnel, at the same time coming astern at full power in an attempt to crash her heavy stern into the thin plates of the destroyer. Cossack skilfully avoided the danger and Lieutenant Turner, leader of the boarding party, boarded the enemy ship with a leap which became famous. A petty officer who followed him fell short and hung by his hands until Turner heaved him on deck. The two quickly made fast a hawser, Cossack closed again, and the remainder (three officers and thirty ratings) followed.

Vian later recorded that ‘it was expected, with the surrender of the German captain, that the release of our prisoners would be a drawing-room affair.’ A German, however, shot a member of the boarding party; this invited retaliation, and a number of the enemy then fled across the ice and opened fire with rifles. Silhouetted